Tag Archives: engineering

At Granta, we recently ran a survey to explore the challenges of teaching sustainable development. Key findings, from 200 plus responses, indicated that academics would welcome more case studies with real data, and a global perspective on interlinked environmental and social impacts. The feedback was consistent with my own experience, as a PhD at the Centre for Sustainable Development where I did research in social and environmental impact assessment tools. I was also closely involved in teaching, and subsequently co-developed a start-up company focusing on software and learning. From these experiences, it was clear that software can have a large impact on teaching and outreach. I’m now working as Development Manager and Sustainability Consultant in the Education Team at Granta, collaborating with the academic community and Professor Mike Ashby to develop teaching resources that support the sustainable development subject-area.

The first in a series in which we meet the Granta team. We spoke with our colleague Remi, to find out what he enjoys about being an Application Engineer and which engineer from history inspires him most. We’re always looking for like-minded individuals who have passion and drive to make positive change to our engineering practices, take a look at our current opportunities if you think this could be you.

“As an Application Engineer, my role is to engage with customers to understand their needs and requirements, determine the benefits of our suggested solution for a customer and derive an implementation strategy with metrics for success.

Thomas Friedman has stated that ‘the world is flat’. He’s not recanting modern scientific discoveries, but he is highlighting that everything, everywhere, is somehow connected and that what happens at some part of the world can have drastic implications in other parts. It’s another way of saying that we live in a globalized world, that we eat, drink, and perform our daily activities using products that sometimes come from such remote places that we don’t even know they exist – take the horse-meat scandal as a recent example! It also means that the way in which we teach our younger generation has to adapt accordingly to this new paradigm of globalization.